Coyote

by Allen Steele

  Gillis, Leslie, Lt. Com. I.D. 86419-D. Password Scotland.

  The response was immediate:

  I.D. confirmed. Password accepted. Good morning, Mr. Gillis. May I help you?

  Gillis typed:

  Why was I awakened?

  A short pause, then:

  Gillis, Leslie, Lt. Com. is still in biostasis.

  Gillis’s mouth fell open: What the hell…?

  No, I’m not. I’m here in the command center. You’ve confirmed that yourself.

  This time, the AI’s response seemed a fraction of a second longer.

  Lt. Com. Leslie Gillis is still in biostasis. Please reenter your I.D. and password for reconfirmation.

  Impatiently, Gillis typed:

  I.D. 86419-D. Password Scotland.

  The AI came back at once:

  Identification reconfirmed. You are Lt. Com. Leslie Gillis.

  Then you agree that I’m no longer in biostasis.

  No. Lt. Com. Leslie Gillis remains in biostasis. Please reenter your I.D. and password for reconfirmation.

  Gillis angrily slammed his hands against the console. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, then forced himself to think this through as calmly as he could. He was dealing with an AI; it might be conditioned to respond to questions posed to it in plain English, nonetheless it was a machine, operating with machinelike logic. Although he had to deal with it on its own terms, nonetheless he had to establish the rules.

  I.D. 86419-D. Password Scotland.

  Identification reconfirmed. You are Lt. Com. Leslie Gillis.

  Please locate Lt. Com. Leslie Gillis.

  Lt. Com. Leslie Gillis is in biostasis cell C1A-07.

  Okay, now they were getting somewhere…but this was clearly wrong, in more ways than one. He had just emerged from a cell located on Deck A of Module C2.

  Who is the occupant of biostasis cell C2A-07?

  Gunther, Eric, Ensign/FSA

  The name was unfamiliar, but the suffix indicated that he was a Federal Space Agency ensign. A member of the flight crew who had been ferried up to the Alabama just before launch, but probably not one of the conspirators who had hijacked the ship.

  Gillis typed:

  There has been a mistake. Eric Gunther is not in cell C2A-07, and I am not in cell C1A-07. Do you understand?

  Another pause, then:

  Acknowledged. Biostasis cell assignments rechecked with secondary data system. Correction: cell C1A-07 presently occupied by Eric Gunther.

  Gillis absently gnawed on a fingernail; after a few minutes he developed a possible explanation for the switch. Captain Lee and the other conspirators had smuggled almost fifty dissident intellectuals aboard just before the Alabama fled Earth; since none of them had been listed in the ship’s original crew manifest, the D.I.s had to be assigned to biostasis cells previously reserved for the members of the colonization team who had been left behind on Earth. Gillis could only assume that, at some point during the confusion, someone had accidentally fed erroneous information to the computer controlling the biostasis systems. Therefore, although he was originally assigned to C1A-07 while Ensign Gunther was supposed to be in C2A-07, whoever had switched his and Gunther cells had also neglected to cross-feed this information from the biostasis control system to the ship’s AI. In the long run, it was a small matter of substituting one single digit for another…

  Yet this didn’t answer the original question: why had he been prematurely revived from biostasis? Or rather, why was Gunther supposed to be revived?

  Why did you revive the occupant of cell C2A-07?

  CLASSIFIED/TS. ISA Order 7812-DA

  What the…? Why was there an Internal Security Agency lock-out? Yet he was able to get around that.

  Security override AS-001001, Gillis, Leslie, Lt. Com. Password Scotland. Repeat question: why did you revive the occupant of cell C2A-07?

  CLASSIFIED/TS: OPEN. Ensign Gunther was to confirm presidential launch authorization via secure communication channel. Upon failure to confirm authorization by 7.5.70/00.00, Ensign Gunther was to be revived from biostasis at 10.3.70/00.00 and given the option of terminating the mission.

  Gillis stared at the screen for a long while, comprehending what he had just read but nonetheless not quite believing it. This could only mean one thing: Gunther had been an ISA mole placed aboard the Alabama for the purpose of assuring that the ship wasn’t launched without authorization from the President. However, since Captain Lee had ordered Gillis himself to shut down all modes of communication between Mission Control and the Alabama, Gunther hadn’t been able to send a covert transmission back to Earth. Therefore, the AI had been programmed to revive him from biostasis ninety days after launch.

  At this point, though, Gunther wouldn’t have been able simply to turn the ship around even if he wanted to do so. The Alabama was too far from Earth, its velocity too high, for one person to accomplish such a task on his own. So there was no mistake what “terminating the mission” meant; Gunther was supposed to have destroyed the Alabama.

  A loyal citizen of the United Republic of America, even to the point of suicide. Indeed, Gillis had little doubt that the Republic’s official press agency had already reported the loss of the Alabama and that FSA spokesmen were issuing statements to the effect that the ship had suffered a catastrophic accident.

  Since no one else aboard the ship knew about Gunther’s orders, the AI’s hidden program hadn’t been deleted from memory. On the one hand, at least he had been prevented from carrying out his suicide mission. On the other, Gunther would remain asleep for the next 230 years while Gillis was now wide-awake.

  Very well. So all he had to do was join him in biostasis. Once he woke up again, Gillis could inform Captain Lee of what he had learned and let him decide what to do with Ensign Gunther.

  There has been a mistake. I was not supposed to be revived at this time. I have to return to biostasis immediately.

  A pause, then:

  This is not possible. You cannot return to biostasis.

  Gillis’s heart skipped a beat.

  I repeat: there has been a mistake. There was no reason to revive the person in cell C2A-07. I was the occupant of cell C2A-07, and I need to return to biostasis at once.

  I understand the situation. The crew manifest has been changed to reflect this new information. However, it is impossible for you to return to biostasis.

  His hands trembled upon the keyboard:

  Why?

  Protocol does not allow for the occupant of cell C2A-07 to resume biostasis. This cell has been permanently deactivated. Resumption of biostasis is not admissible.

  Gillis suddenly felt as if a hot towel had been wrapped around his face.

  Security override B-001001, Gillis, Leslie, Lt. Com. Password Scotland. Delete protocol immediately.

  Password accepted, Lt. Gillis. Protocol cannot be deleted without direct confirmation of presidential launch authorization, and may not be rescinded by anyone other than Ensign Gunther.

  Anger surged within him. He typed:

  Revive Ensign Gunther at once. This is an emergency.

  No members of the crew may be revived from biostasis until the ship has reached its final destination unless there is a mission-critical emergency. All systems are at nominal status: there is no mission-critical emergency.

  Eric Gunther. Eric Gunther lay asleep on Deck C1A. Yet even if he could be awakened from hibernation and forced to confess his role, there was little he could do about it now. The long swath of ionized particles the Alabama left in its wake rendered impossible any radio communications with Earth; any signals received by or sent from the starship would be fuzzed out while the fusion engines were firing, and the Alabama would remain under constant thrust for the next 230 years.

  If I don’t return to biostasis, then I’ll die. This is an emergency. Do you understand?

  I understand your situation, Mr. Gillis. However, it does not pose a mission-critical emergency. I apologize for the error.
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  Reading this, Gillis found himself smiling. The smile became a grin, and from somewhere within his grin a wry chuckle slowly fought through. The chuckle evolved into hysterical laughter, for Gillis had realized the irony of his situation.

  He was the chief communications officer of the URSS Alabama. And he was doomed because he couldn’t communicate.

  Gillis had his pick of any berth aboard the ship, including Captain Lee’s private quarters, yet he chose the bunk which had been assigned to him; it only seemed right. He reset the thermostat to seventy-one degrees, then took a long, hot shower. Putting on his jumpsuit again, he returned to his berth, lay down, and tried to sleep. Yet every time he shut his eyes, new thoughts entered his mind, and soon he would find himself staring at the bunk above him. So he lay there for a long time, his hands folded together across his stomach as he contemplated his situation.

  He wouldn’t asphyxiate or perish from lack of water. Alabama’s closed-loop life-support system would purge the carbon dioxide from the ship’s air and recirculate it as breathable oxygen-nitrogen, and his urine would be purified and recycled as potable water. Nor would he freeze to death in the dark; the fusion engines generated sufficient excess energy for him to be able to run the ship’s internal electrical systems without fear of exhausting its reserves. He wouldn’t have to worry about starvation; there were enough rations aboard to feed a crew of 104 passengers for twelve months, which meant that one person would have enough to eat for over a century.

  Yet there was little chance that he would last that long. Within their biostasis cells, the remaining crew members would be constantly rejuvenated, their natural aging processes held at bay through homeostatic stem-cell regeneration, telomerase enzyme therapy, and nanotechnical repair of vital organs, while infusion of somatic drugs would keep them in a comalike condition that would deprive them of subconscious dream-sleep. Once they reached 47 Ursae Majoris, they would emerge from hibernation—even that term was a misnomer, for they would never stir from their long rest—just the same as they had been when they entered the cells.

  Not so for him. Now that he was removed from biostasis, he would continue to age normally. Or at least as normally as one would while traveling at relativistic velocity; if he were suddenly spirited back home and was met by a hypothetical twin brother—no chance of that happening; like so many others aboard, Gillis was an only child—he would discover that he had aged only a few hours less than his sibling. Yet that gap would gradually widen the farther Alabama traveled from Earth, and even the Lorentz factor wouldn’t save him in the long run, for everyone else aboard the ship was aging at the same rate; the only difference was that their bodies would remain perpetually youthful, while his own would gradually break down, grow old…

  No. Gillis forcefully shut his eyes. Don’t think about it.

  But there was no way of getting around it: he was living under a death sentence. Yet a condemned man in solitary confinement has some sort of personal contact, even if it’s only the fleeting glimpse of a guard’s hand as he shoves a tray of food through the cell door. Gillis didn’t have that luxury. Never again would he ever hear another voice, see another face. There were a dozen or so people back home he had loved, and another dozen or so he had loathed, and countless others he had met, however briefly, during the twenty-eight years he had spent on Earth. All gone, lost forever…

  He sat up abruptly. A little too abruptly; he slammed the top of his head against the bunk above him. He cursed under his breath, rubbed his skull—a small bump beneath his hair, nothing more—then swung his legs over the side of his bunk, stood up, and opened his locker. His box was where he had last seen it; he took it down from the shelf, started to open it…

  And then he stopped himself. No. If he looked inside now, the things he had left in there would make him only more miserable than he already was. His fingers trembled upon the lid. He didn’t need this now. He shoved the box back into the locker and slammed the door shut behind it. Then, having nothing better to do, he decided to take a walk.

  The ring corridor led him around the hub to Module C7, where he climbed down to the mess deck: long empty benches, walls painted in muted earth tones. The deck below contained the galley: chrome tables, cooking surfaces, empty warm refrigerators. He located the coffeemaker, but there was no coffee to be found, so he ventured farther down the ladder to the ship’s med deck. Antiseptic white-on-white compartments, the examination beds covered with plastic sheets; cabinets contained cellophane-wrapped surgical instruments, gauze and bandages, and rows of plastic bottles containing pharmaceuticals with arcane labels. He had a slight headache, so he searched through them until he found some ibuprofen; he took the pill without water and lay down for a few minutes.

  After a while his headache went away, so he decided to check out the wardroom on the bottom level. It was sparsely furnished, only a few chairs and tables beneath a pair of wallscreens, with a single couch facing a closed porthole. One of the tables folded open to reveal a holographic game board; he pressed a button marked by a knight piece and watched as a chess set materialized. He had played chess assiduously when he was a teenager, but gradually lost interest as he grew older. Perhaps it was time to pick it up again…

  Instead, though, he went over to the porthole. Opening the shutter, he gazed out into space. Although astronomy had always been a minor hobby, he could see none of the familiar constellations; so far from Earth, the stars had changed position so radically that only the AI’s navigation subroutine could accurately locate them. Even the stars were strangers; this revelation made him feel even more lonely, so he closed the shutter. He didn’t bother to turn off the game table before he left the compartment.

  As he walked along the ring corridor, he came upon a lone ’bot. It quickly scuttled out of his way as he approached, but Gillis squatted down on his haunches and tapped his fingers against the deck, trying to coax it closer. The robot’s eyestalks twitched briefly toward him; for a moment it seemed to hesitate, then it quickly turned away and went up the circular passageway. It had no reason to have any interaction with humans, even those who desired its company. Gillis watched the ’bot as it disappeared above the ceiling, then he reluctantly rose and continued up the corridor.

  The cargo modules, C5 and C6, were dark and cold, deck upon deck of color-coded storage lockers and shipping containers. He found the crew rations on Deck C5A; sliding open one of the refrigerated lockers, he took a few minutes to inspect its contents: vacuum-sealed plastic bags containing freeze-dried substances identified only by cryptic labels. None of it looked very appetizing; the dark brown slab within the bag he pulled out at random could have been anything from processed beef to chocolate cake. He wasn’t hungry yet, so he shoved it back and slammed the locker shut.

  Gillis returned to the ring corridor and walked to the hatch leading to the hub access shaft. As he opened the hatch, though, he hesitated before grasping the top rung of the shaft’s recessed ladder. He had climbed down the shaft once before already, yet he had been so determined to reach the command deck that he had failed to recognize it for what it was, a narrow well almost a hundred feet deep. While the Alabama was moored at Highgate and in zero gee, everyone aboard had treated it as a tunnel, yet what had once been horizontal was now vertical.

  He looked down. Far below, five levels beneath him, lay the hard metal floor of Deck H5. If his hands ever slipped on the ladder, if his feet failed to rest safely upon one of its rungs, then he could fall all the way to the bottom. He would have to be careful every time he climbed the shaft, for if he ever had an accident…

  The trick was never looking down. He purposely watched his hands as he made his way down the ladder.

  Gillis meant to stop on H2 and H3 to check the engineering and life-support decks, yet somehow he found himself not stopping until he reached H5.

  The EVA deck held three airlocks. To his right and left were the hatches leading to the Alabama’s twin shuttles, the Wallace and the Helms. Gillis ga
zed through porthole at the Helms; the spaceplane was nestled within its docking cradle, delta wings folded beneath its broad fuselage, bubble canopy covered by shutters. For a moment he had an insane urge to steal the Helms and fly it back home, yet that was clearly impossible; the shuttles only had sufficient fuel and oxygen reserves for orbital sorties. He wouldn’t even get as far as Neptune, let alone Earth. And besides, he had never been trained to pilot a shuttle.

  Turning away from the porthole, he caught sight of another airlock located on the opposite side of the deck. This one didn’t lead to a shuttle docking collar; it was the airlock that led outside the ship.

  Reluctantly, almost against his own will, Gillis found himself walking toward it. He twisted the lockwheel to undog the inner hatch, then pulled it open and stepped inside. The airlock was a small white compartment barely large enough to hold two men wearing hardsuits. On the opposite side was the tiger-striped outer hatch, with a small control panel mounted on the bulkhead next to it. The panel had only three major buttons—PRES., PURGE, and OPEN—and above them were three lights: green, orange, and red. The green light was lit, showing that the inner hatch was open and the airlock was safely pressurized.

  The airlock was cold. The rest of the ship had warmed up, but in the lock Gillis could feel the arctic chill creeping through his jumpsuit, see every exhalation as ghostly wisps rising past his face. He didn’t know how long he remained there, yet he regarded the three buttons for a very long time.

  After a while, he realized his stomach was beginning to rumble, so he backed out of the compartment. He carefully closed the inner hatch and lingered outside the airlock for another minute or so before deciding that it was one part of the ship he didn’t want to visit often.

  Then he made the long climb back up the access shaft.

  There were chronometers everywhere, displaying both Greenwich Mean Time and relativistic shiptime. On the second day after revival, Gillis decided that he’d rather not know what the date was, so he found a roll of black electrical tape and went through the entire ship, masking every clock he could find.